Traditional principles are still the foundation of cutting-edge digital animation. Art director and industrial designer Duane Loose covers the 12 basic design principles that govern animation-and helps you see these in action.

From the author of

From the author of

The Illusion of Life—Disney Animation, by Frank Thomas and Ollie
Johnston, is considered to be the Bible of animation. Traditional and
digital animators at one time or another have learned the basic principles of
animation articulated so clearly by these two pioneers of animated feature film.

In Chapter 3 of their book, they outline 12 guiding principles of animation
that grew out of the processes discovered during their animation work at the
Disney studio. Here’s what they had to say regarding the principles they
discovered:

The animators continued to search for better methods of relating drawings
to each other and had found a few ways that seemed to produce a predictable
result. They could not expect success every time, but these special techniques
of drawing a character in motion did offer some security. As each of these
processes acquired a name, it was analyzed and perfected and talked about,
and when new artists joined the staff they were taught these practices as
if they were the rules of the trade. To everyone’s surprise, they became
the principles of animation.—Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, quoted
in The Illusion of Life

Frank and Ollie list and describe the principles they helped to discover and
articulate to guide their work; I encourage you to find this book and study
Chapter 3 in depth. These 12 principles, with variations in how they are named
and described, can be found in many books and online resources. With the advent
of digital animation, they have become even more important, and many digital
animators have incorporated these principles into their work. I encourage you
to do the same in your max animation work.

Animation Principles in Practice: The Bouncing Ball

The principles of animation and the max tools used to create animation are
best learned while you are actually creating an animated object. A traditional
basic animation exercise is to animate a bouncing ball. This simple example
contains many of the important concepts and tools you’ll use repeatedly as
you become more proficient in your max animation work. So, open max and save a
new file as BouncingBall.max to use as you complete this part of the
workshop.

Create the Ball and Ground Plane

Animating a bouncing ball might seem simple at first glance; a ball and a
ground plane for it to bounce against are all that are needed to set up the
model for animation. Follow the next steps to create the ball and the ground
plane for this exercise.

Change to the top view and create a sphere with a radius of about 40
units. Change its name to Ball and move it to Absolute: World Coordinates:
0,0,15.

Make a box, 850 units square, with a height of 0, centered underneath
the sphere at Absolute: World coordinates: 0,0,0.
Name this box Ground Plane, and change its length and width segments to
8. The Top and Right view of the box and sphere should look like
Figure 1.

Figure 1 Animating
a bouncing ball so that it looks as if it were really bouncing is a deceptively
difficult animation task. Getting it right will teach you almost everything
you need to know about the general principles of animation.

Create a Target Camera

Animating this ball will be easier if you use a consistent point of view to
look at the animation as you develop it. Creating a camera in the shot will
establish that POV.

Zoom out a little in the Top view and press G to turn off the
grid. Click on the Lights and Cameras tab panel, and select Target Camera.
A target camera has two parts: the camera itself and its target. Click to
create the camera object, and then drag in the viewport to create its direction
and target, as shown in Figure
2. Let go of the mouse button when the cursor is right over the ball
object.

Figure 2
Creating a camera is similar to creating any object in max. You can adjust
the position of the camera and its target after you have created them by using
the transform commands in the orthographic views or by using the camera viewport
navigation tools.

Change the perspective viewport to Camera view, and use the Dolly navigation
tool to dolly in on the ball; then use the Truck tool and the Orbit tool
to adjust your view to look like Figure
3.

Figure 3 Targeted
cameras always look at their targets; when you use the camera viewport navigation
tools, the camera target stays locked in place as the camera location relative
to the target is adjusted.

NOTE

The navigation tools for the camera view aren’t all that different from
the perspective view; they’re just named following the camera movement
conventions: Dolly for Zoom, Truck for Pan, and Orbit for Rotate. Use max’s
online help for more information on controlling your camera viewport
navigation.

Change the Animation Length

The last step in the setup process is to change the frame length for this shot
from the max default of 100. Click on the Time Configuration icon and change
the length to 315, as shown in Figure
4. That’s all for the shot setup; save your work.

Figure 4 Changing
the frame length to 315 gives you some length to work with while you are developing
the animation. Always give yourself more room than you think you’ll need
at the beginning of rough animation. You can refine the shot frame length later.